Mural Crown: Coastal TowersOut 3rd March on Xenoglossy Productions Mural Crown’s debut album ‘Coastal Towers’ offers such a peripheral, half real experience that one could be forgiven for allowing it totally pass by. It comes to us as a distorted transmission from "somewhere else", another time maybe, covered in radio static and the ravages of... Continue Reading →

Carma: OssadasOut 3rd March on Monumental Rex Somewhere between the grim realism of Esoteric and the yearning threnodies of Skepticism sits ‘Ossadas’, the latest album from Portugal’s Carma. This is a weighty tome of epic contemporary funeral doom. Why use the “contemporary” qualification? Because much like modern Skepticisim the music pivots away from the depressive... Continue Reading →

A casual discussion about Shostakovich by two Bruckner enthusiasts (Jason and Sébastien). A graduate from the Royal Conservatory of Liège in Belgium (1st prize organ, 1st prize harmony, 1st prize history of music, 1st prize musical analysis); Sébastien Letocart is a self-taught composer, who has built his musical equally by studying ancient music (i.e. Josquin... Continue Reading →

Wolves in Winter: The Calling QuietOut 24th February on Argonauta Records Wolves in Winter are the latest chapter in the lengthy annals of West Yorkshire doom metal. With members of Monolith Cult, Lazarus Blackstar, Solstice, and Iron Rat joining forces on ‘The Calling Quiet’. Superficially, this is an agreeably drab iteration of damp Northern misery,... Continue Reading →

In this video we unpack this month's box from Headbangers Trough, a legally distinct metal subscription service to the metalhead box, and we make a pitch to Carlsberg to sponsor the channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nttf6dCPNF4

Genre lifecycles are a fascinating thing. But whilst the greater part of our attention is usually fixated on the origin story, the concept of genre death remains oblique. For underground movements such as thrash or death metal, the moment when true commercialisation is at its most apparent is often cited as the point of no... Continue Reading →

Oerheks: LandschapsanachronismenOut 22nd February on Amor Fati Productions Obscure, peripheral, melancholy, yet oddly wistful, there’s no denying the rich emotional brew Belgium’s Oerheks whip up on their latest demo ‘Landschapsanachronismen’. A pleasingly symmetrical release consisting of two epic pieces of obscure black metal pulling at similar heartstrings as those attempted by much of the post... Continue Reading →

The lads chat Celtic Frost https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atS759nYEgs

Summing up why we like the music we do is a unique challenge. We spend so much time at the coalface of specificity that stepping back and admiring the totality of our taste is akin to leaving Plato’s cave. We lack the language or even the psychology to fully perceive our surroundings, let alone articulate... Continue Reading →

https://youtu.be/PIIjh7HB_tM Why did England never witness an enduring black metal scene? Does this fit within a wider historical narrative of England as Europe's black sheep?